Governments seized a lot of BTC in the past. As soon as they have physical access to the owner, it is seizable.

Bulgaria seizing 213K BTC: https://www.coininsider.com/bulgarian-government-owns-3-bill...

The US seizing 73K BTC: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-54833130

are prime examples.

More recently, US getting back some of the ransom paid: https://www.fastcompany.com/90644461/stolen-bitcoin-is-hard-...

In fact, seizing property can have many complications and be very hard(ownership structures, occupant protection laws, debts and obligations etc).

But with a bank account they don't need physical access to the owner.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/aug/25/british-cit...

Re th last link, it is possible that they recovered the fee paid to the affiliate of the ransomware gang that installed the ransomware. This is possibly because the affiliate was an informant for the FBI. So it wasn't really seizing it, more like returning it.

> As soon as they have physical access to the owner, it is seizable.

This is incorrect. If the owner doesn't reveal the private key, the government cannot seize the bitcoin.

Sure it's seizable, but it can be much harder (impossible?) to seize if the owner knows what they are doing.

The world's #2 biggest holder of Bitcoin is the Bulgarian FBI. The #4 biggest holder of Bitcoin is the US FBI.

Never underestimate the cryptanalytic power of whacking someone with a rubber hose until they give you their keys.

> The world's #2 biggest holder of Bitcoin is the Bulgarian FBI. The #4 biggest holder of Bitcoin is the US FBI.

Source?

>Never underestimate the cryptanalytic power of whacking someone with a rubber hose until they give you their keys.

No forms of wealth is safe against torture, and I don't think people expect bitcoin to be any different. It's still vastly more secure than a bank account (which only requires a phone call to seize) and is trivially linked to your identity (as opposed to pseudonymous bitcoin addresses)

Bulgaria seized 200,000 BTC in an organized crime crackdown in 2017 [1]. The FBI seized 144,000 BTC in the Silk Road crackdown in 2013, though have since auctioned some of that off. [2]

I believe there are only 4 addresses with more than 100,00BTC each. Satoshi is 1. I believe Bitfinex is 3.

[1] https://www.coindesk.com/bulgarian-government-sitting-3-bill...

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/10/25/fbi-sa...

>I believe there are only 4 addresses with more than 100,00BTC each. Satoshi is 1. I believe Bitfinex is 3.

The flaw in your analysis is that you assume that there's a one to one relationship between an address and a person. This is not the case because a typical bitcoin wallet has hundreds of addresses and address reuse is discouraged. Therefore your conclusion that bulgaria is the nth largest bitcoin holder in the world because there are are only n addresses with balances larger than it is incorrect.

Sorry, I was also quoting a number of other sources. They may have done the analysis the same way of course. [1] You certainly do raise a good point however, I'm open to retracting that since to your point it's probably not possible to know for a fact. My bad!

[1] https://medium.com/cryptocurrencies-ups-and-down/top-ten-bit...

Your body is easy to seize